Why new film Mary Magdalene is a contender for 2019 Oscars

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A new film about Mary Magdalene dispels some ancient calumnies and might already be an Oscars contender for 2019, says Adam Smith

The champagne might not yet be flat when it comes to this years Oscars, but an early contender for awards glory next year has already emerged in Garth Davis’s Mary Magdalene.

The film, produced in the UK and released by Universal, tells the ultimate in origins stories – the birth of one of the world’s great religions – from the perspective of the often historically marginalised figure of Mary Magdalene.

Top talent: Garth Davis is an Australian television, film and commercial director Credit:
Getty

Set in the Holy Land in the first century AD, the film follows Mary’s journey as she leaves her small fishing village to follow a controversial spiritual leader, Jesus of Nazareth, and journeys with the disciples to Jerusalem, where she finds herself at the centre of the founding story of Christianity.

“I wanted to avoid doing something that had been done before,” says director Davis, who is keen to present the story as one with deep contemporary resonances. “Most biblical movies are shot in the desert and there's an ‘etiquette’ about them. I wanted this to be more relatable, relevant and contemporary and I really wanted to avoid all the stereotypes.”

Oscars pedigree

Davis (whose debut feature Lion was nominated for six Academy Awards in 2016 and won two Baftas) shot the bulk of the movie in eight weeks in southern Italy, where locations included the ancient town of Matera, as well as countryside of Puglia, which stood in for Cana and Jerusalem. Cinematographer Greig Fraser, who won an Oscar for his work on Lion, and also lensed Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and the billion dollar-grossing Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, often shot using entirely natural light to give the scenes a luminous look.

One to watch: put religion to one side and discover something very beautiful in new film Mary Magdalene

For the lead role in a movie that’s sometimes epic in scale but emotionally intimate the director needed an actor of rare subtlety and spirituality and he found her in Rooney Mara, with whom he had worked on Lion. Mara broke through with her leading role in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and was both Oscar and Golden Globe nominated for her role in Todd Haynes’ Carol in 2015.

But Mara was at first sceptical about playing the ‘apostle to the apostles’. “I went to Catholic school so I had a lot of preconceived notions,” she says. “The first time I read the script, it was with a very cynical outlook.

“Then I spoke with Garth [Davis] and I understood what kind of film he was making. Most other films about Jesus are solely about him, and this time the film is about Mary Magdalene. We still see all of the things that we’re used to seeing in biblical films, but we see it through her eyes. And seeing it through her eyes, we get to see it in a very different light. I thought this was a great opportunity to tell a version of the story that we hadn’t seen before.”

Leading lady: Rooney Mara stars as Mary MagdaleneCredit:
Getty

Social conscience

Controversially, the film does not depict Mary as a former prostitute, an historical distortion introduced in 591 by Pope Gregory that Davis and Mara were keen to dispel. Early screenings have garnered rave reviews, with critics praising her quietly passionate, moving performance. But the supporting cast is equally stellar. Chiwetel Ejiofor (who gained Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for his role in 12 Years A Slave) plays Peter, and three-times Oscar-nominated Joaquin Phoenix takes the key role of Jesus Christ.

It’s a film that, Mara hopes, will appeal well beyond religious viewers and reach anyone interested both in the fascinating figure of Mary, and in the birth of one of the world’s great religions.

“I told Garth very early on that I didn’t want to be in a ‘religious’ movie,” she says. “I hope the audiences can take different things from the film. If people can put their preconceived notions about religion aside, they’ll find something really beautiful in what Jesus was saying, not as a religious figure but just as a man. He was very much a Gandhi or Martin Luther King figure.”

Mary Magdalene

This Telegraph article, brought to you by Universal, is inspired by the new film Mary Magdalene, out 16 March.

Mary Magdalene is an authentic portrait of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood figures in history. It tells the story of Mary (Rooney Mara), a young woman constricted by the hierarchies of the day who defies her family to join a new social movement led by the charismatic Jesus of Nazareth (Joaquin Phoenix).